Fight the Man by Building Self-Reliance

Fight the Man by Building Self-Reliance

I recently read an blog post essay by David of
Raptitude.com misappropriately titled: “How to
Make Trillions of
Dollars.”
The title isn’t encouraging us to make trillions of dollars, rather,
it’s describing the massive consumer driven economy that encourages
unhappiness so that we get stuck in a perpetual cycle of consumerism and
how self-reliance is the only way to fight it. It’s well worth the read.
It’s one of the best articles that I’ve read in a long time.

I’ll show my favorite parts:

After the second world war, a few privileged Americans developed a
brilliant formula for building an unimaginably huge economy:

[Our economy] demands that we make consumption our way of life,
that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we
seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in
consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of
prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns […] We need
things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an
ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress,
ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly
more expensive consumption.

are easily distracted from the unhealthy state of their lives and
their culture by breaking news and celebrity gossip

perpetually convince themselves it is not the right time to make
major lifestyle changes

happily buy stuff that breaks within a year, and which nobody
knows how to fix

have learned, through the media’s culture of blame-mongering, that
the key to solving public and private issues is to find the right
people to hate

…..

You are being encouraged, from virtually every angle, to become or
remain unhealthy and unfulfilled, because then you will buy more. Not
to make you paranoid, but that’s the primary purpose of the glowing
rectangle in your living room — to encourage poor (but not
quite failing) health, general complacency, and an unconscious
reflex for parting with money.

I’m not even telling you to throw your TV out the window. But that’s
definitely a move with a very
high ROI, if the
thought interests you.

People watching TV; the epitome of a way that a person can waste time.
I’ve come to despise TV. The sound of it being on represents lost
opportunities.*

David writes…

So don’t hate The Man, it will only weaken and distract you from what
you might accomplish if you don’t follow his cues. Hate has a
terrifically poor ROI, at least as far as quality of life goes. If
you’ve got some rage you feel needs “investing”, take up a racquet
sport. Direct your rage away from any people and animals, and when
your tantrum is over, turn your energy towards the cultivation of your
life skills.

I’m not referring to situationally-specific life skills like changing
tires, folding button-up shirts, or opening public washroom doors
without touching the handle, though they are certainly useful.

Here I’m talking about the real fundamentals of being an empowered,
self-directed human being.

And to make these all possible: self-reliance — an unswerving
willingness to take responsibility for your life, regardless of who
had a hand in making it the way it is.

Cultivate these qualities in yourself and others, and when this way
of life becomes more normal than getting one’s lifestyle cues from
discount-store flyers and CNN, the surefire trillionaire strategy
won’t work anymore. For anyone.

Self-reliance. I believe this is one of the fundamental tenets of
entrepreneurship that motivates us to do what we do. SELF-RELIANCE.

David writes…

This is not us against them, it’s us for us.

We aren’t fighting a battle. We are doing this for ourselves. Go read
the essay now.

*I should note that although I hate TV, I do enjoy sports and movies.
I’ll save that rationale for another post.